New ASN Acquired + Moving PoPs/BGP To New Configuration

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

Hey everyone,

 

As some of you know, I've been in the process of getting GFL its own ASN for our Anycast network (92.119.148.0/24). Recently, I finally decided to go with ARIN and complete that process. This costed GFL around $550.00 ($250.00/y) and I had to perform the payment through my personal bank account:

 

 

This allows our network to become multi-home meaning we can start hosting PoP servers from multiple providers instead of being forced to use a single hosting provider such as Vultr in our case. This means we can achieve better coverage/routing, better prices, and find/use hosting providers with better DDoS protection. Ultimately, this was a much needed move with the network and I know I've been putting it off for a while since the RIPE ASN process didn't go to plan, but thankfully ARIN's ASN process was a lot more simple.

 

With that said, I've been exchanging multiple emails with four - five potential hosting providers for our network in the past week. I'm searching for what I want to accomplish which is hopefully finding enough coverage and capacity to support over 100 gbps of DDoS protection along with giving us control over making custom rule filters, etc. I already have a plan for our Dallas location (since we need a lot of bandwidth there) and plan to purchase a machine that's $50.00/m which has plenty of bandwidth.

 

I am also in the process of talking to Vultr (our current hosting provider for the network). They plan to validate our new ASN soon and once this is done, I'll be able to update our PoP servers with the new BGP information. I will have six hours to update all of our PoP's BGP information until PoPs with the old information stops announcing to our IPv4 prefix. This should be more than enough time. All I will have to do is restart each PoP server, update the BGP information, and start up the BIRD daemon again. I will be taking the BIRD daemon offline ahead of time to avoid disruptions with the network. There shouldn't be any downtime with this change, but at the same time, I've never done anything like this before. If there is any downtime, it shouldn't last long.

 

Overall, this is a great move for us. Just a warning, we will more than likely be moving everything to the new ASN in the next 24 hours or so. This process shouldn't require downtime and I've had Vultr verify that, but I can't guarantee anything since I haven't done this before.

 

Thank you.

[DEV Lars 4 / 799]

Still waiting for the write up of this whole process. Hehe

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

14 hours ago, DEV Lars said:

Still waiting for the write up of this whole process. Hehe

I plan to write out a guide eventually. You can message me on Discord (Roy#6777) if you have any questions regarding the process. I'll be more than glad to help and give insight!  

 

Thanks.